


given you love and i've given you anger as well

by TheJGatsby



Series: potentially lovely perpetually human [8]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-04
Updated: 2016-02-04
Packaged: 2018-05-18 03:15:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5895979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheJGatsby/pseuds/TheJGatsby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s the picture of defeat, almost graceless, and there’s something bitter in the back of her throat that it’s ending like this, that after everything the fearsome Kylo Ren came quietly.<br/>(Or, Ben Solo comes home)</p>
            </blockquote>





	given you love and i've given you anger as well

**Author's Note:**

> ok I’m going with the “Poe and Ben knew each other as kids” theory because I LOVE PAIN
> 
> Also I really hope I did Rey justice!! I know my strength lies with writing Kylo so PLEASE tell me if I need to work on how I depicted Rey!! I luv her and I really really want to do right by her. Also I’m definitely writing more in this universe to add context so yeah.
> 
> Title from A Cannon by Regina Spektor

It was supposed to be a simple reconnaissance mission- land the Falcon, in and out, back within three days. Easy, they’d done it a million times before, and they were the dream team- Rey, Finn, Poe, and Chewie, a well-oiled machine. But the intelligence they’d gotten about this particular base must have been wrong, or a trap, because it was big, and well-defended, and far more difficult to break into than they’d anticipated.

That’s how the shootout happened.

There’s one thing they all can agree on, even after everything, and it’s that they probably wouldn’t have made it out alive if not for the cloaked, hooded figure who’d appeared seemingly out of nowhere, rolling out from one of the ruins, then taken out about half the stormtroopers chasing them with a grenade, and shouted at them to run while he picked off the others with a blaster.

“Split up and rendezvous at the Falcon,” Poe had said to the others, before racing off into the underbrush. Finn went the other direction, and Rey hesitated, glancing back at the battle just in time to see their rescuer stagger back from the force of two blaster-bolts to the shoulder. Without a second thought she ignited her staff-saber and leapt into battle, helping the hooded man take out the last of the stormtroopers. She grabbed him by his uninjured arm and started running.

He stumbled after her, surprised. “What are you doing?”

“We’re not leaving you here, you’re injured, they’ll kill you,” she replied, leaving the ruined city behind and racing for the trees.

“You don’t want to-”

“Don’t tell me what I want,” she snapped. “You helped us, we’re helping you, now shut up and _run_.”

Poe was already at the Falcon when they get there, and the hooded man resisted as she dragged him up the gangway into the ship. He collapsed against the wall as soon as they got in, and now that they weren’t running she could see blood soaking through his tan cloak at his shoulder.

“I’m taking this off so I can see your wound,” she said, firm and businesslike. He protested as she unwound the cloak from his shoulders and the hood and scarf fell away to reveal a familiar face, dark, frightened eyes, a jagged white scar bisecting it from jaw to brow. A shocked hand flew to her mouth.

For a moment time seemed to freeze, the entire universe screeching to a halt in her head and scrambling to realign itself along this new axis, Kylo Ren putting his life on the line for them. Everything Luke ever told her about forgiveness and faith clamors in her mind all at once, the memory of Han’s death, the deep, constant sorrow in Leia’s eyes, the unspoken desire they orbited around- _we want our Ben back_ . Rey stares at him sitting captive and vulnerable in front of her and wants, fiercely, for it to _mean_ something, for it to be as much of a shift in the foundation of everything as it feels like.

After a beat of tense silence, Poe murmured, “Ben? Ben Solo?” Ren looked up at him, then down at the floor, his fists clenched tight. Poe laughed, delighted, and threw his arms around Ren’s shoulders. “It’s you! We thought you were _dead_ , Ben, your mom’s gonna be so thrilled, how did you escape the massacre? Have you been on the run this whole time? It’s been years, Ben, stars, where were-” There was a click, and then a blaster held at Ren’s head. “Finn, what are you doing?”

“Get away from him,” Finn snarled. “That’s Kylo Ren.”

“What?” Poe exclaimed, laughing. “No, Finn, that’s _Ben Solo_ , General Organa’s kid-”

“We have to go,” Rey said, tensing as she felt danger approaching in the Force.

“They’re right,” Ben said tightly, glaring daggers at the floor of the Falcon. “I’m Kylo Ren, or I was, and we need to _leave_.”

Poe’s face fell, from joy to shock and then revulsion. He stood and turned on his heel and shouted for Chewie to prepare for takeoff.

“We need to restrain him somehow,” Finn said, not moving the blaster from Ren’s temple. “We’re taking this _monster_ back to the Resistance to pay for everything he’s done.”

After a moment Rey nodded, blinking as if waking from a reverie. “Okay,” she said. “Okay.” She stood and wandered over to the cabinet where she remembered storing a bunch of handcuffs when they’d been converting the Falcon into a Resistance ship. He didn’t resist as she restrained his hands behind his back, and she tugged him to his feet by his uninjured shoulder.

“We need somebody on the guns!” Poe shouted from the cockpit as they swung wide, dodging shots.

“Go, Finn, I’ll take care of him,” Rey said, dragging Ren towards the storage room with the only lockable door on the ship. Finn looked between her and their prisoner and the cockpit, then nodded, making sure to fix Ren with a hateful glare before running down to the gunner’s seat.

And that’s how they got here, Ren sitting on the floor of the storage room, his shirt discarded, Rey smearing bacta over the blaster wound in his shoulder, tense silence filling the air. She keeps her focus mostly on the task in front of her, sneaking an occasional glance over at his face to see him watching her, the look in his eyes intense and undecipherable.

“You saved our lives,”  she says finally. “Why?”

“It’s not a trick, if that’s what you’re wondering. Or a trap. Nothing duplicitous. My intentions are wholesome.” There’s a hint of something close to teasing sarcasm in his voice.

“I didn’t think it was,” she protests, realizing as she says it that it’s true. “I was wondering why you would risk yourself like this- you must have known we’d take you prisoner if you came with me.”

“I’m tired of running,” he replies, and she can hear it in his voice, resignment, exhaustion in every fiber of his being, a man made of surrender. She sits back and considers him, putting the jar of bacta aside. He flexes his hands, almost nervously. “Are you going to restrain me again or just accept the risk?”

She shakes her head. “You won’t hurt me. You still owe me from Tatooine.”

“Which time on- oh, that,” he says, cutting himself off nervously, as if he’s just said too much.

Rey frowns at him, confused. “When else were we both on- wait, that was _you_?” She gapes, flashes back to the last time she was on Tatooine, the Hutt’s palace and another mysterious rescuer. He slumps over, burying his head in his hands, and it’s obvious, now, she doesn’t know how she missed it- the way he feels in the Force is familiar and undeniable, all the bounty hunter’s armor in the world shouldn’t have been able to hide it from her. “How did I not…?”

“I was disguising myself,” he replies miserably, “I didn’t want you to know it was me.”

“Why?” she asks, reaching out to take him by the wrist. “You saved me, why would you want to hide that?”

“Don’t act as if you haven’t heard what the First Order’s been telling people I’ve done. The rumors are everywhere, I even heard them in all the noplace outer-rim cantinas where they’ve only just found out the Hosnian system’s gone,” he says, practically spitting the words. His eyes fill with a hate she hasn’t seen since Starkiller, since Han, and it’s almost novel to her that it’s directed at the First Order now- but understandable. The galaxy is always humming with rumors, and ever since Starkiller each one involving him has gotten progressively more grotesque, stories of war crimes to make hardened soldiers sick, and at the heart of it all a silent, black-clad figure, looming and fearsome.

She snorts. “I didn’t _believe_ any of it.”

“What?” His head shoots up.

She looks down at his hand, unmoving between hers, lightly traces a lightning-bolt scar on his palm. He shivers at the touch. “I see through your eyes, sometimes, when I dream. You’re always running from someone, and… I don’t know, whenever we’d get a location report on you, I could just- I could _feel_ that you were somewhere else. I can’t explain it. But you don’t… it’s different than before. You feel different.”

“So you just… accepted some dreams and feelings over Resistance intelligence?” He sounds beyond incredulous, and she scowls, dropping his hand.

“I trust the Force, and I _knew_ something was weird from the minute I found you on Tatooine. It didn’t add up- why you were alone, why you didn’t try to win me over to the dark side, everything about it was strange and wrong and just… it made more sense to believe that they were lying about you than to try to come up with any other explanation.”

For a long moment he stares at the ground, and finally says, “I got injured when the ship I stole in my… defection crashed on Tatooine. I hid in the cave so they wouldn’t be able to bring me back.”

“You could have _died_ if I hadn’t found you,” Rey says, aghast.

“It would have been better than going back to them.” He’s resolute, firm in his reply. “Anything is better than going back to them.”

She lets the silence drag on for a moment. “On Tatooine, you said you-”

“Yes.” The admission hangs in the air between them- _someone who loves you_. She’s not sure what to make of it, so she just reaches for the bandages in the medpack and finishes wrapping his shoulder. “Thank you,” he says quietly, pulling his shirt back on.

“I’m going to put your restraints back on, just in case one of the boys comes in later,” she says, picking up the handcuffs from the floor. “I’m sorry.” He offers his wrists silently, still staring at the floor, and she clicks them on, loose, then gathers everything back into the medpack and locks the door behind her as she leaves.

They’re already in hyperspace, so by the time she gets to the main room where the dejarik board is, Finn and Poe are already there, the latter slumped over with his head in his hands, his boyfriend rubbing comforting circles into his back.

“I just… I can’t believe it, you know?”  he says, looking up at Rey. “We were friends, Rey, we were… for him to just… and all the things he _did_ , Rey!”

“He didn’t try to hurt you, did he?” Finn asks her. “I don’t trust him.”

“You’ve no reason to,” she replies, sinking down against the wall and looking at them defiantly. “But I do.”

“What?!” both men exclaim in unison. They start protesting immediately- “He’s Kylo Ren!” “He tried to _kill_ us!” “Do you have any idea how _dangerous_ -” “Why in the name of all that’s good-”

“Because he saved my life,” she interrupts calmly. “Just now, and on Tatooine when the Hutt captured me, and….” She blinks, incidents cropping up again and again in her memory, a dozen memories of being saved and helped and protected by different disguises, broad shoulders and a low voice garbled by different vocoders and a Force presence hazy and distorted but always vaguely familiar. “Other times. Cato Nemoidia, Muunilinst, Coronet City-”

“You’re telling me he’s been _following us_?” Poe asks, horrified.

“No, me. I think. It might be an accident or it might be the Force or, stars, I don’t _know_ , why does it matter? He’s had so many opportunities to hurt me or kidnap me or kill me and he hasn’t, doesn’t that count for something?”

“Oh, so he’s obsessed with you? We’re supposed to be okay with that?” Finn asks, glaring in the general direction of the storage closet keeping Ren.

“Stop it- he just… I want to believe the best, okay? I want to believe he’s changed. He basically turned himself in to the people who most want him held accountable, that means something. I think he’s trying to… make up for what he’s done. I don’t think he’s dark anymore.” She fiddles with the hilt strapped to her side. “He helped me build my saber.”

“Oh,” Finn says sarcastically. “He helped her build her saber- Poe, did you hear that? He helped her build her saber! I guess we were really wrong to judge him all those times he tried to _kill us_ , he must be a really good guy! Get it together, Rey, he’s a murderer and a criminal and even if he _is_ trying to fix what he did that doesn’t mean he deserves forgiveness, especially not from us. I know you’re an optimist and everything but there isn’t a good bone in his body. I don’t know how he got into your head but you have to get him out.”

Rey flexes her fists, anger swelling in her chest, and storms out of the room and into the cockpit. Chewie’s there, staring out of the window, and she just sits down hard in the pilot’s seat, curling one leg up underneath her.

“He’s not as bad as they think he is, right Chewie?” she asks, looking at the furry creature. “I mean… you knew him when he was little, right? He must have been… he still has _good_ in him, right? He has to.”

Chewie sighs and warbles his wistful agreement- _I’d like to think so_.

* * *

 

“Rey?” Poe says, knocking on the doorframe of the cockpit an hour or so later. “You should probably get some sleep, we won’t be back towards home for a while.”

“You were friends with him?” she asks, still staring out the viewport and the blur of hyperspace.

“I- yeah. When we were kids.” He shakes his head. “It was a long time ago, he’s obviously changed.”

“What was he like?”

Poe sits down in the copilot seat that Chewie had vacated a while ago. “He was… nice. Earnest. Loyal. A little weird, he had a hard time getting along with other people, he could be really… intense. But he had a good heart, underneath it all, and he cared a lot.” He sighs, scrubbing his hands over his face. “I don’t know what happened to make him so….”

“Snoke,” Rey says coldly. “Snoke happened.”

There’s silence between them for a while, till Poe says, “I want to believe, okay? I want to believe what you said about him changing, and him being… better, but… I _remember_ him torturing me and killing all those people and… Rey, I don’t know, okay? I just don’t know. I hope, for everyone’s sake, for the General’s especially, that you’re right, but….” He sighs again, heavily. “Get some rest, okay? It’ll all still be here after you sleep.” She nods and hugs Poe briefly before wandering out of the cockpit.

It’s no surprise when she finds herself in front of the storage room, and she takes a deep breath before entering. He doesn’t look up, but she can see the tension in his shoulders as she closes the door behind her. Kneeling, she takes off his restraints, and he finally looks at her.

“Why? Why leave?” she asks, searching his dark, sad eyes.

“You have no idea how intoxicating you are, how _addictive_ your light is,” he says, “do you?” She shrinks back a little bit at his words, at the depth of yearning in them. “Just… _years_ of trying to give myself over to the darkness, and you undid it all in the space of a day.”

“What do you mean? What did I do?”

He shakes his head, laughing bitterly. “You existed. Just- can I show you?” He reaches out a hand, scarred and calloused and pale, and at her slow nod, he places it on her cheek, featherlight, as if he’s doing something forbidden, as if she’s precious and he’s unfit to be near her. She sits stone-still, hardly daring to breathe. When Ren closes his eyes, so does she, and she finds herself in a dream like a memory, the same as the one on Takodana, the same as the ones where she’s behind Ren’s eyes, running from stormtroopers. She’s looking at herself, now, strapped into that horrible device on Starkiller, and she can practically taste her own fear and fury in the air. The hand of her dream-self- Ren’s hand- lifts and reaches towards the girl in the chair- _me_ , she thinks- and the scene plays out as she remembers it- a battle of wills, Ren murmuring in her ear about fear and loneliness and an island, and then dream-Rey pushes back, into dream-Ren’s mind, and, oh, _oh_ , this is what he meant, this blinding light, this searing energy, sweet and agonizing and impossibly lovely, and when dream-Ren abruptly pulls away, locking out dream-Rey and her light, real Rey finds herself aching for the return of that singing brightness, hating the way dream-Ren scrambles for the darkness like a frightened creature.

The scene changes, and they’re in the snow, sabers locked, and Rey is looking at herself again, leaning back over the chasm.

“You need a teacher,” she hears Ren saying in the dream, “I can show you the ways of the Force.” And in his mind she can hear his reason telling him _no_ , that he’d have to leave Snoke, that he’d have to leave everything, and she can hear every other part of him screaming _I don’t care_ , desperate just to have her, keep her, in any way possible, desperate just to be near her light, weak in the face of desire. Dream-Rey reaches for the Force, and it _explodes_ around her, and dream-Ren is ready to surrender right there, give up and throw down his saber and let the light wash over him, its siren’s call impossible to ignore, even if it means death. It’s muscle memory that carries him through the rest of the fight, because every other part of him is reveling, the weight of years of darkness falling from his shoulders, darkness for which he was ill-suited from the beginning, darkness that was never, ever meant for him, and then he’s lying in the snow with his face split open and burning, but all he cares about is the feeling of her light fading as the rift is torn between them. That’s the real torment.

When she comes back to herself, there are tears on her face, and in a moment of hushed intimacy he gently traces his thumb over her cheekbone, wiping away the wetness there, and then takes his hand back, quickly, as if caught doing something shameful, and looks away from her guiltily.

“Is that what it’s like?” she breathes.

He nods. “Torture.”

“That’s why you…?”

“No,” he says, shaking his head. “No, that didn’t start until Tatooine- the first time.”

“But you left the First Order… because of me?”

“Because if it was hard to keep ahold of the dark side before you, it was impossible after,” he confirms. He looks into the middle distance, haunted like he’s remembering a years-old wound. “And it stopped mattering- everything I wanted from the dark side, all the reasons I’d turned, they didn’t matter anymore, they hadn’t in so _long_ , I was so young and lonely and angry and rash and... _stupid_ when I made that choice, and I stayed because I thought I couldn’t go back, but… I have to try. Even if nothing comes of it, trying and failing will be better than not trying at all.” He smiles, almost to himself. “If nothing else, I had this,” he says, looking at her with a heaviness in his eyes she can’t begin to understand.

She holds his gaze for a long second before it overwhelms her and she has to look away, change the subject. “They’re going to put you on trial when we get back,” she says.

“I know.”

“Whatever happens, I’m not going to let them hurt you.”

He laughs, short and dry and humorless. “Don’t try to protect me, I deserve whatever punishment I get,” he says, and she looks up at him with a fierce glint in her eye.

“Don’t tell me what to do. I know there’s good in you, despite everything, underneath it all, and even though you’ve done horrible things you can do _better_ , and you deserve the chance to.” She takes his hand. “Even if no one else believes in you, I do.”

“Why? Finn was right,” he says. “I’m a monster. You said it yourself.”

“People change.”

“All I do is hurt people, it’s all I’ve done since… so long. Years and years of nothing but inflicting pain and misery and- and _death_ , I’ve killed so many people.” He lets his head fall back, cracking against the metal wall, and his grip on her hand is tight but she can see his other hand curled into a white-knuckled fist, blood welling up where his nails are biting into his palm.

“No one is beyond forgiveness,” she says softly, running her thumb over his knuckles.

“How are you so good?” he murmurs, so soft and filled with awe she’s not even sure she was meant to hear it.

“I choose to be,” she replies, certain. “Even when I don’t want to, I choose to be.”

* * *

 

There’s a heated argument, when they land, about how to take Ren to the general. Finn is in favor of dragging him, restrained, through the base and showing him off. Poe thinks they should take him to the prison block quietly. Rey stands resolute on calling the General to the Falcon and letting her decide- that’s what they do, in the end, after Rey glares and snarls the boys down. For all the hate and betrayal Finn and Poe feel towards Ren, they still have the grace to be embarrassed when Rey chastises them for trying to submit Ren to the indignity of being shown off like a prize bantha. If they want to be seen as noble, they have to act noble, and part of that is showing respect to enemies and prisoners.

So Poe flicks on his comm. “General Organa? I know you’re probably busy, but you should come to the Falcon, we… we have something you’re going to want to see.”

Within minutes she’s striding up the ramp into the ship, and it fills Rey with a warm feeling, the faith their General has in them, that she sees whatever they deem important as worthy of her time without question. All three try to salute, and Leia waves them down dismissively, touching Chewie on the arm as she passes him.

“What’s so important, then?” she asks. Finn moves towards the closet, but Rey reaches out a hand to stop him, giving him a steady look as she walks past him.

She closes the door behind her and Ren looks up as she kneels down in front of him. “It’s your mother,” she says. He sucks in a breath and she thinks she’s never seen him so tense, his shoulders a rigid line of anxiety, but he nods and gets to his feet, hands shackled in front of him and eyes trained on the floor. He’s the picture of defeat, almost graceless, and there’s something bitter in the back of her throat that it’s ending like _this_ , that after everything the fearsome Kylo Ren came quietly like a chastised child. For all she’s glad that it was easy and painless and bloodless, it still feels unfair.

When she leads him out by the wrist, Leia reacts immediately, gasping and stumbling back to catch herself against the wall. “Ben,” she breathes, tears welling in her eyes. He flinches, shrinking into himself, and Leia looks at Rey, the question forming on her lips.

“He gave himself up,” Rey says, smiling at her, and that’s all the reason she needs to cross the room in a few bold steps and throw her arms around her son, clutching him to her like she thought she’d never see him again.

She probably didn’t.

Rey steps away from the reunion, and looks over at Chewie, who growls affirmatively at her. Gesturing to Finn and Poe, she makes her way out of the Falcon, looking back to see Ren- Ben?- and Leia clinging to each other, shoulders shaking, and Chewie moving towards them with his arms open.

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me on [tumblr](http://thejgatsbykid.tumblr.com)!


End file.
